Travel Weekly Blog

Rollercoaster fans: here's a preview of Manta, a ray-themed ride in development at SeaWorld Orlando...

Here are the details:

• The queue will run through an aquarium stocked with 300 rays
• Riders will travel face-down beneath a 12ft wide ray-shaped car
• The coaster will reach almost 60mph
• ...and go upside-down four times
• Riders will pass within inches of water, with the car's 'wings' skimming it

TW Blog was wiped out by the relatively tame Crush's Coaster in Disneyland Paris, so I went to Neil Buckley, our in-house adrenaline junkie up in sales, for a comment.

This looks awesome. Standing in the queue would be cool as you're looking at the rays thinking, in a minute I'm going to be riding on the back of a 12ft mechanical one.

Four loops is not a lot, but the bonus is the speeds that you are going at, and the fact that your car skims the water giving you a sense of gliding along the surface.

The only other coaster I've been on where you sit like this is Air at Alton Towers, which is my favourite - but with the added bonus of getting wet, or almost getting wet, people are gonna love that. Bring it on!

(And I've had to cut some, er, colourful expressions of enthusiasm out of that.)

If you're not of Neil's persuasion, you'll be able to look round the aquarium without going on the ride, which is a nice touch. It's due to open in summer 2009.